![]() ![]() ![]() Of their ices, all made on site, the stars are a smoked tea ice cream and a raspberry sorbet. Rice pudding with orange syrup and rhubarb reads nicely but is a little loose. ![]() A brownie is too heavy and dense the plastic knife bows as I try to slice it. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Observerĭesserts also need work. ‘Serious intensity but slightly bitter’: sticky chicken wings. It needs acidity and kick so it can play support act to the main event. The celeriac coleslaw is fine as far as it goes, which is not quite far enough. There’s a dark glaze and a serious intensity, but they are slightly bitter and the wings have been overcooked. Their sticky chicken wings look the part. Non-meat options include a patty made with Bombay potatoes, with an onion bhaji and lime pickle, and a falafel burger with tahini and pickled red cabbage. From the specials board we try the mackerel burger, a breaded and deep-fried fillet of fresh mackerel, topped with smoked mackerel and one simple masterstroke: batons of pickled rhubarb, the sharpness of which puts all that fishiness in its place. It turns out that tiny florets of cauliflower cheese also make terrific croquettes. This is more attention to detail than is strictly necessary at the £4.50 price. On the side there’s a fine dipping sauce of salsa verde. Or is that only me?Īs well as the beef options, there’s a pulled lamb burger, leftovers from which go into crisp croquettes so pungent you can practically hear them bleating as you bite in. By that point you already have half the sauce down your shirt and your forearms. The brioche buns hold together for only half the eating time, but that’s OK. I throw in extra bacon to mitigate all the greenery, and it’s the real thing: a deep dry cure with dense pigginess. That £9.50 Hereford Hop is topped with long-braised “pulled neck” of beef, cheese, deep-fried pickled onion rings, mustard mayo, ketchup and fresh, crisp leaves of baby gem, there to give the impression that this might be healthy eating. ![]() There is a char outside and they prefer to serve them medium-rare, which is laudable given that under some local authorities that’s an arrestable offence. Indeed, I’d mark them Very Good, with a gold star and a tick. It’s also forgivable because the burgers are good. Bigging up the meat’s provenance makes sense. Nope, no idea.īut this flummery is forgivable partly because this is a burger restaurant located in a town which has given its name to a breed of cattle. The restaurant smells deeply of rendering beef fat and if that doesn’t appeal to you, why have you read this far? The food is served on plastic trays, in cardboard pots, and comes with a side order of buzz words. The space is rough-hewn, with bare wood tables and floors, dangling lightbulbs, an open kitchen and the haze that comes from extraction which can’t quite cope, or doesn’t want to. I feel the same way about the £9.50 charged for the star burger at Burger Shop by a Rule of Tum, the achingly punning name for a humble place down a side street in Hereford. The burgers come medium rare – laudable given that under some local authorities that’s an arrestable offence It’s a beautiful piece of cookery of many types, and no more outrageous than any other food experience you also wouldn’t be willing to spend your money on. You are paying for a USP which has been violated.) My defence of the Bloomfield burger is that it isn’t merely a burger. Wagyu is prized primarily for its texture, on account of the intra-muscular fat-lacing – the one thing that is lost when you shove it through the mincer. (Only in the case of wagyu burgers is this reasonable. We gasp when some come slapped with a sizeable price tag. We roll our eyes theatrically at each new opening. When a food object becomes subject to the caprices of fashion, it’s easy for its basic virtues to be lost. ‘A deep dry cure with dense pigginess’: the star Hereford Hop burger. ![]()
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